Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind. ~ Virginia Woolf

Booking Through Thursday: Expat Paperbacks

October 21, 2010

Name a book (or books) from a country other than your own that you love. Or aren’t there any?

Despite my recent, New England-centered snobbery, I’m not actually a big fan of books from my home turf, even if I favor the history. (I am, however listening to John Denver’s “Thank God, I’m a Country Boy” on Pandora, right now, to poke holes all over that plea).

There is a very cutesy, little writing that I can’t find, right now, of the way an “All-American” Apple Pie can be broken down and shipped back to various corners of the earth based on the origin of the apples, wheat, shortening, et al. I feel like my book shelves tend to be about the same makeup. I, of course, have the worn and torn, well read Steinbecks, Fitzgeralds and Hemingways (who, granted, didn’t even write half of his books about or in the grand old Grand Old) but when all is said and done, I find myself a bigger fan of the Ecos, the Barberys, the Larssons, the Sartre’s and many more.

I can’t claim to be worldly for the sake of being worldly; I just find that my favorites (Eco, especially) have been my home away from home. Of course, again, one piece of me will always have a table reservation in those dusky, dreamy sidewalk cafes of Paris alongside the other expats…